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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24545272">what a tangled web we weave</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthelight/pseuds/allthelight'>allthelight</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>'what if she kept lyra', Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dysfunctional Family, F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 00:40:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,346</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24545272</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthelight/pseuds/allthelight</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>'“I know you’re not sleeping,” Asriel says, his voice a deep rumble, made soft by the late hour and the company he keeps. “You used to be better at pretending.”</p><p>Marisa smiles but doesn’t look at him, instead looking at the ceiling and the dancing shadows she finds there. “I wasn’t pretending.”</p><p>It would be easy to pretend here. In this room, this bed, with this man… oh yes, it would be incredibly easy to pretend that nothing has happened to them, that they are still the young explorers they once were, drunk off each other and the thrill of the chase for knowledge. Even though they aren’t, she feels that they have grown old.' </p><p>It's three years later and the secret gets harder to keep. A 'what if she kept Lyra' AU.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter, Lyra Belacqua &amp; Marisa Coulter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>86</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>what a tangled web we weave</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This has been in the works for a while now and I finally managed the time to finish it. It follows on from my work 'write the poem and make it disappear' and it set in the same universe but you don't have to read that one first!</p><p>Also I'm kind of working with the theory that since Edward never died and Marisa never became outcast then her and the monkey have a slightly better relationship than in canon.</p><p>I hope you enjoy. Kudos and comments are greatly appreciated but please don't feel any pressure!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s very late at night, practically morning, and yet neither of them are sleeping. It’s not entirely unusual – sleeping not their main activity when they spend these stolen moments together – but what they <em>are </em>doing, staring at the ceiling as the room slowly turns from black to blue, is. Things have changed. They are no longer as able to fall as easily into oblivion as they once could.</p><p>“I know you’re not sleeping,” Asriel says, his voice a deep rumble, made soft by the late hour and the company he keeps. “You used to be better at pretending.”</p><p>Marisa smiles but doesn’t look at him, instead looking at the ceiling and the dancing shadows she finds there. “I wasn’t pretending.”</p><p>It would be easy to pretend here. In this room, this bed, with this man… oh yes, it would be incredibly easy to pretend that nothing has happened to them, that they are still the young explorers they once were, drunk off each other and the thrill of the chase for knowledge. Even though they aren’t, she feels that they have grown <em>old. </em></p><p>Asriel pulls her closer, the heat of his hands searing her skin. His lips find her neck, kissing as gently as he knows how. “What’s wrong?”</p><p>“Nothing.”</p><p>His laugh is throaty and she feels its vibrations through her skin. “You used to be a better liar.”</p><p>She used to be a lot of things. She used to know who she was. Now she feels confused, conflicted. Her own husband hasn’t even noticed. Only Asriel has. Only Asriel would.</p><p>“You forget I know you,” he murmurs, fingers tracing non-sensical patterns over her skin as he answers her unspoken question. Then, without warning, he stops, and the skin where he was grows cold. “Or I used to.”</p><p>“Things have changed.” Her voice is quiet, even though there is no need for it. It’s only the two of them here, in another world. “It’s no longer us we have to worry about.”</p><p>“It isn’t,” he agrees, and it scares her slightly. If he had dismissed it, told her she was being ridiculous, then he might have been able to handle it. It couldn’t be so terrible if he didn’t think so. “But it hasn’t been in years. Why are you thinking about it now?”</p><p>“The lie I told him.” At the mention of her husband, Asriel stiffens He always does. She wonders if it’s merely a reflex at this point. “It wasn’t a very good one.”</p><p>“Oh, I doubt that,” he says silkily. “You’re a very good liar.”</p><p>She shifts to face him for the first time. “And yet you just said I used to be better?”</p><p>“With me,” he clarifies. “And even then, I can never tell where the truth begins and ends, if it’s even there at all.” His fingers resume their tracing. “And if <em>I </em>can’t tell, then you can certainly be sure that Edward is clueless.”</p><p>Marisa would like to believe him, she honestly would, but Asriel doesn’t know him like she does, hasn’t lived with him for the past five years. The look in his eyes, especially lately, is becoming hard to bear.</p><p>“If he finds out-”</p><p>“He won’t.”</p><p>“<em>If </em>he finds out,” she repeats, harder. “It’s not just us who’ll be in his firing line. One look at Lyra and it’ll fall into place. What do <em>you </em>think he would do, faced with knowledge like that?”</p><p>At last she has his attention, and he exhales deeply. They both know exactly what Edward would do. A dull man he may be, but not a fool. Or at least not entirely.</p><p>“I don’t know what to tell you, Marisa,” Asriel says at last, and she can just tell from his tone that a fight is coming, because he never just lets things <em>be </em>if they are not his own way. “You’ve appointed yourself as the most important figure in Lyra’s life. It’s not as though I have any say in the matter.”</p><p> </p><p>“You’re never here,” she tells him. “You want a say but you don’t want to live with the actions. It’s entirely within your character.”</p><p>He props himself up on his elbow, reaching behind him to turn on a lamp. His face is thunderous. “You don’t let me see her. My own daughter and you keep me from her as though I were a criminal.”</p><p><em>Well aren’t you? </em>She wants to bite out but she doesn’t, because she doesn’t know where it comes from. The golden monkey eyes her knowingly from the foot of the bed, where seconds before he was curled around Stelmaria. For a second it looks like he’ll say something. Occasionally he does. But this time he doesn’t, and so she says instead, “It is not safe.”</p><p>“<em>Once,</em>” he hisses. “Once in the past three years have I laid eyes on her. I want more.”</p><p>“You can’t have it. It’s not safe. Every day she grows more and more like you, and every day is another day he could put it together. You in the house, you anywhere near the child, and Edward will see.” She barks a hash laugh. “I’m sorry, Asriel, but there are men who are at least equal in intelligence to you.”</p><p>But Edward isn’t, and Asriel doesn’t even have to say it.</p><p>Marisa isn’t sure when this fear overcame her, this paralysing fear that Edward would know what happened and what they did. He’d kill them all, she’s sure of it, and while she doesn’t doubt that she could handle herself, that Asriel could handle himself, she’s so deathly afraid of what he would do to her daughter.</p><p>She doesn’t like other children. She walks past mothers in the street and feels no kinship with them. When other ministers’ wives show off their growing bumps or baby photograms it’s all Marisa can do to nod and smile politely and not visibly recoil from them. When the children are actually brought to the house, she has no inclination to touch them or coo over them and instead she usually spins around on her heel and walks away.</p><p>Lyra is different. For Lyra she would die. For Lyra she would kill. There is no doubt in her mind that she loves her daughter. The urge to keep her safe, to protect her, is fierce, and it never leaves her. While Edward is alive, while there is still a secret, Lyra will never be safe.</p><p>“Then give her to me,” Asriel says softly, and it’s so unexpected that she almost asks him to repeat it to make sure she hasn’t misheard. “You can invent a story for your husband – boarding school, convent, whatever you like – and she can live with me. She will be safe.”</p><p>“You don’t know the first thing about children.”</p><p>“And you do?” But then he shakes his head. “I’ll engage a nurse. She’ll be safe at my estate, Marisa. Nobody would ever find her.”</p><p>“You’d abandon her the first chance you got,” she tells him, barely controlling her rage. “You’d run off the way you always do, leave the way you always do.” She looks up at him through her lashes. “I don’t think so.”</p><p>“I could take her,” he says, casually cruel. “I could simply pick her up and vanish.”</p><p>Her voice is frigid when she tells him, “Over my dead body will you take my daughter away from me.”</p><p>Stelmaria has appeared on the other side of the bed, green eyes narrowing at Marisa and her tone. The golden monkey looks at her reproachfully, as if Marisa has ruined everything.</p><p>Asriel only laughs. “I wouldn’t take her from you, but you must consider something.”</p><p>She knows she has to. They speak about this every time they see each other now, about how something must be done. As Lyra grows older it gets harder and harder to keep the truth locked away. Even at three years old she has her father’s confidence, his gritty determination that has him stopping at nothing to get what he wants. Only she can see it for now, but eventually everybody will see it, too. Asriel is too large a man, too known, for it to be kept a secret for too long.</p><p>“I can’t,” she whispers, feeling utterly and completely vulnerable. “I know what she is, a ticking time bomb living in my house, threatening to blow us all up, and yet I can’t part from her.” She looks away from him. “I couldn’t bear it if she was gone.”</p><p>She feels Asriel swallow, and he touches her with uncharacteristic gentleness; an acknowledgement that, perhaps, this means more to her than he had thought.</p><p>“She’s changed you,” he murmurs. “You never used to be like this.”</p><p><em>Only for her </em>she thinks, but does not say.</p><p>“She’s changed everything,” she whispers back, and can’t decide exactly what she means.</p><p>“I want to see her more, Marisa,” he tells her, and doesn’t seem surprised when she rolls away from him. His eyes are sincerely blue, and it does make her wonder if she knows him at all.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Why do you want to see her?”</p><p>He narrows his eyes. “She is my daughter. I have a right.”</p><p>“Oh, is that what this is? It’s not that you care for her, it’s that you can’t stand the fact that something that is yours is being raised as someone else’s child.”</p><p>The scoff is deep and guttural. “Don’t be ridiculous.”</p><p>“Am I? Or can you just not bear the thought that everybody thinks she’s Edward’s daughter? That when you ask her who her father is, she looks around for him? That’s what bothers you.”</p><p>His face changes. It becomes soft in the lamplight, perhaps even tender. “Is she happy?”</p><p>“Don’t pretend that is of any concern to-”</p><p>“Is she <em>happy</em>?” He repeats, more insistently. He looks younger. “Does she laugh? Does he treat her well?”</p><p>Marisa stops completely for a moment, caught utterly off guard, and ponders the answer. Edward is good to Lyra. She has no reason to suspect that he thinks of her as anything other than his daughter. The only oddity is when, very occasionally, he puts her to bed and she kisses him on the cheek. He always stands over her for a few minutes longer than would be deemed necessary, and there’s always that puzzled look on his face as though there’s something not right about it, but for the life of him he can’t figure it out.</p><p>“Yes,” she says, voice hoarse. It’s not a lie, but they both know she would. Anything other than a good answer and Asriel would be gone before she could blink, ready to strike her husband down, looking for any excuse. “He is. He… loves her.”</p><p>There’s a pained look on his face but it only lasts for a moment. Then he shakes his head and drops his eyes. “I see.”</p><p>She sighs, feeling something like pity for him. It’s entirely disconcerting; his face is not one to be pitied easily. “She can’t be a pawn to you, Asriel. This isn’t a game that the three of us are playing anymore.”</p><p>“How surprising, coming from you. You treat everyone like pawns. You wind people up and set them clashing like toys. Everything’s a game to you.” But his heart isn’t in it, so it falls flat and fails to wound her. Instead there’s just a dull ache.</p><p>“Lyra’s not a game,” she says simply.</p><p>Rolling out of bed, Marisa slips a robe around herself, and begins to search the room for her clothes.</p><p>“What are you doing?”</p><p>“I don’t think I should stay anymore.”</p><p>“There’s no need to be dramatic. Stay until morning, at least.”</p><p>She stops and looks at him. What might their life have been like if they had done things differently? What if she had married Asriel, and Lyra was his by law? Might it have been better?</p><p>But she knows it never could be. It’s all about the thrill for them, the danger of it, and they were never the type of people who could settle down and make a home together, raise a child together. The dull monotony of what she has with Edward would drive them to insanity. If there’s no uncertainty, no knife edge to be balancing precariously on, then there’s just no point.</p><p>If she stays until morning then she’s in danger of forgetting. She’ll allow herself to be swept away by his tender words and feral smiles and unrelenting fingers, and in the morning the bruises won’t be so much as a reminder but a way to forget everything that came before.</p><p>“No,” she says, looking him dead in the eye. “Not this time.”</p><p>“I see. So I’m to be left with nothing?”</p><p>“You’re never left with nothing, Asriel. Perhaps that’s part of your problem.”</p><p>He looks at her, properly looks at her, and <em>sees</em> her in the way nobody else can. She has wounded him, but only superficially. In a few days even the memory of this exchange will no longer pinch at his heart. Nothing ever sticks, it always just rolls right off.</p><p>“Things will have to change,” he says, as she gathers her things and calls for a car to take her back to the city. “Your priorities cannot remain as they are.”</p><p>“Desperation doesn’t suit you.”</p><p>“I don’t think I’m the only one who’s desperate.”</p><p>“Don’t make me choose,” she warns him, tone as sharp as the knife edge they are balancing on. “I can assure you that you would not like my answer.”</p><p>There’s a pensive smile on his face. “You love her,” he muses, and it’s not a question but she answers him anyway. The monkey gasps slightly and Stelmaria watches them both knowingly, as infuriatingly smug as the human she is a part of.</p><p>There’s only a slight hesitation before she tells him, “Yes. I do.”</p><p>And then she walks away.</p><p>-x-</p><p>The sun is already rising when she makes it home, slipping through the front door without a sound. Some of the servants are already awake but they avoid looking at her. Not that it would matter if they did. Everything has been put back in its rightful place.</p><p>Edward is gone. He left yesterday before she left to go and see Asriel. Her comings and goings are usually of no concern to him, but this one had been. He’d touched her wrist lightly with three fingers, and she’d looked down at them as if she wanted to snap them off.</p><p>“Everything’s alright, isn’t it?” He’d said, and she couldn’t tell if the question was genuine or just meant to throw her off. Edward’s motives are never quite clear to her. There is no telling where the politician ends and the man begins.</p><p>She hadn’t been thrown, though. Of course she hadn’t. The monkey had bared his teeth but she had moved slightly in front of him. Instead she had laughed charmingly and made her face perfectly innocent and had said, “What are you talking about? Of course it is.”</p><p>He’d nodded though he hadn’t been placated but he walked away anyway. And so had she. It had taken an enormous amount of strength to keep on going in a straight line and not dive into the bathroom and scrub until her arm was red raw.</p><p>It’s getting more and more unbearable to continue as they are.</p><p>Now she walks to the end of the hallway on the second floor, her favourite room apart from her office. Pushing open the door slightly, Marisa sees a small shaft of sunrise illuminate her daughter’s dark head. She would love nothing more than to go in and run her hand along her daughter’s soft cheek, or even better crawl under the soft sheets and watch her breathing soft and slow with sleep. It would soothe the headache that rages beneath her temples, and quiet the deafening pounding of her heart.</p><p>Except she still smells like Asriel and his touch clings to her skin and she cannot bring that to Lyra, cannot bear the thought of them touching in this way. To stay safe they must stay apart. It’s just so tiring to be in the middle. Neither of them seems to care of the consequences. One has the excuse of a childish mind, and the other of course, is Lyra.</p><p>Instead she goes to the bathroom and locks the door, relishing the sudden silence that the tiled room provides. The only sound is her breathing, and the monkey’s tail beating like a heartbeat against the floor.</p><p>She slides to the floor, back against the door. She should wash, slough off the skin that Asriel has touched and become clean again, at least physically. But suddenly she is so devoid of energy that it’s all she can do to stare at the floor and wonder what her life has become?</p><p>Edward is rising in power. <em>Such a fortunate marriage </em>everybody coos, and Marisa wants to take the words and screw them up and shove them back down their throats. Fortunate for whom? Once, perhaps, it was advantageous but no longer. The climbing of the ladder means that she has more engagements to attend, more functions to make an appearance at. There’s no longer enough time for her work as she wants, and while the connections she has been afforded are certainly agreeable, there’s no time to use them as she appears at parties and galas with a smile on her face that feels more like a grimace with every step.</p><p>“You know what you did, don’t you?”</p><p>The monkey’s voice is rusty from disuse. She knew this was coming. She saw it in his eyes earlier.</p><p>“What did I do?”</p><p>“You told him you loved her.”</p><p>“I did.”</p><p>He looks at her with soft eyes, as though he is pitying her. It makes her muscles tight. “I thought you didn’t tell him things like that.” He hops closer. “I thought there was a reason.”</p><p>There is a reason. She might love Asriel, she’s as sure of that as she’s sure of the fact that she’ll never tell him. It’s safer that way. While she suspects, she’s never sure if he reciprocates, if indeed he’s capable of such a thing. If he knew, he would have a dangerous advantage over her. Love and trust are two very different things, after all.</p><p>“It’s different with Lyra,” is her explanation, one she feels she really shouldn’t have to give. “He loves her, also. He would never harm her to hurt me.”</p><p>It’s a difficult feeling to rationalise, but it’s something she can’t help feeling all the same. He would be a mediocre father at best if given the chance, but there’s something in his eyes and his voice when he speaks of Lyra. When Marisa manages to sneak a photogram to him he acts indifferent towards it, but late at night when he thinks she’s asleep she finds him looking at it. It’s quite different to the way Edward looks at Lyra. There is no puzzlement in Asriel’s gaze, just a quiet pride that she would be sorely pushed to find any other time.</p><p>“Are you sure of that?”</p><p>“Yes,” she grinds out, the muscle in her jaw straining.</p><p>“But you don’t trust him?”</p><p>No, she doesn’t trust him. He’s slippery and shiny and says all the right things at the right time but she never knows exactly what’s going on underneath. She knows him, but she will never <em>completely </em>know him. There will always be a part she cannot touch.</p><p>The monkey already knows this, though. He just wants her to say it, to admit between them that this tightrope they’re walking is a fine one, and a too-sharp intake of breath, a too-loud heartbeat, will be more than enough to send them plummeting to the ground below.</p><p>Marisa will not give him the satisfaction.</p><p>“It is what it is,” she says grimly, and makes him stand outside the bathroom while she has a shower.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you so much for reading! I hope you're all well :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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